Gary Watts is founder of Broadband Voice.

I am Gary Watts, founder of Broadband Voice. But I began my working career in fast food. I worked my way through school at Mississippi College and went into the food business. I operated two Dairy Queen stores. I operated those for 10 years. But that ultimately didn't work out.

A friend of mine was working for a company called Unity Communications. They were looking for people to sell telecommunications products to small- and medium-sized businesses. It was on the front end of telecom products being bundled together.

After just three or four years, I went from being a salesman to a vice president at the company. We had clients from Las Vegas to Huntington, West Virginia.

One product we had was voice-over-IP technology, the delivery of voice communications through Internet Protocol networks. I thought that was the future.

When the (federal) Telecommunications Act of 1996 happened and more local providers could come in and offer services, I saw a great opportunity. Broadband Voice started in 2006. We now have 1,100 customers in a number of states.

It's different every day. My role is more in selling the (concept of) the company, selling the product, so I try to hire the right people on the operations side of things. I spend half my time trying to sell the company to customers. I talk to my chief financial officer every day. I try to work with my staff every day. We're developing partnerships with companies to distribute our product.

I believe very strongly in our product, so I like being able to tell people about our product. My sales experience helps a lot with that. A big challenge is educating the potential customer on what the technology can do for them. They don't always immediately see the benefit of what the technology can do for them. They've done the same thing for years and they'll think, "Why change?" We have the opportunity to introduce a new product into the relationship, to show them the savings.

The sell is very important, but building relationships is what's most important to me.

The product will change over time, but if the relationship is good, we can help them with those changes.

With technology, you can work from wherever you are. That can be a blessing and a curse. Some days, you work seven hours a day, some days 15 hours, some days 12 hours. We're seeing success in rural areas of Mississippi because no one else is going after those markets. There is currently not a lot of competition there.

Being a boutique-style company, we can make these decisions on which markets to target fairly quickly.

To grow a company, you need to have a more regional focus. We want to expand into the contiguous states and beyond. I see myself as always in a selling role, maybe not to customers but to potential acquisitions and strategic partnerships about the value of our product.